Scareship_Issue8

coworkers are occasional, and he hasn’t been on a date in several
months.), so it isn’t that. He watches sitcoms over the news
anyway, and they’re still on. (The laugh-tracks are a bit peculiar,
but so what?) The noise of traffic isn’t nearly as intrusive as the
silence of the streets. He hasn’t had a meal this good in ages, and
it’s like chewing cardboard.
Twice during dinner he gets up to look out the window and
shout. No response. It’s dark now, and he looks for lights in the
buildings across the way. None. If he’d done this last night, he’d
have gotten several obscene earfuls.
Out in the street again after dinner, Tommy walks around
looking up. He spots a few apartment house windows lit, all high
up (naturally), and shouts. (Office buildings are a waste, lights on
there mean nothing.) “Rent-free luxury apartments all over
Manhattan,” he shouts out, laughing. He looks around, suddenly
unnerved by the silence, by the herds of non-human things
surrounding him. He feels, and laughs but still feels, like prey.
Back in the apartment, swallowing half a beer and with music
on now—the television is too much now, pictures of people—
Tommy tries to think of what else he can do. “I’m an idiot.” Where
is everybody in this day and age?
He surfs the net for hours, and not a single news site or blog
has anything more recent than last night, and no mention of a
global disaster wiping out hordes of people. Not one site he can
find has been updated. Not the ones he visits and sometimes
participates in, not the other ones he searches for or finds links to
from various sites. Now he knows he’s alone—unless they are as
stupid as he was. He has to hope that is the case, which thought
should seem at least a little funny. He copies a message onto a
number of boards, initially determined to hit every damn board on
the net. He creates new memberships on a couple of popular
boards, but the auto-response giving him a password and access
rights—that is too damned creepy,
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